French poster from 1954 in favour of the European Defence Community (EDC). The EDC is represented as a shield, a defensive alliance ‘for peace’ against the fascist and Soviet threats.
With this poster, the National Federation of Deportees and Internees, Resistance Fighters and Patriots call on the French people not to ratify the treaties establishing the European Defence Community (EDC), since it sees therein a return to the atrocities perpetrated by the German army during the Second World War.
‘Refused!’ In 1954, Pierre Mendès France, French Prime Minister, refuses any form of participation by German forces in a European Defence Community (EDC), despite pleas from the US Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, and the British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden.
On 16 April 1954, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower makes a statement on future relations between the United States, the European Defence Community (EDC) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).
In September 1954, the French Section of the European Movement publishes a communiqué in which it criticises the National Assembly’s rejection, on 30 August, of the Treaty establishing a European Defence Community (EDC).
On 25 February 1953, the Foreign Ministers of the Six meet in Rome during the negotiations on the implementation of the European Defence Community (EDC).
